TV REVIEW: 'Ray Donovan' and 'Masters of Sex' start second season Sunday

Saturday

Jul 12, 2014 at 9:00 AMJul 20, 2014 at 4:40 PM

Look closer and you'll discover that the show about breaking heads, “Ray Donovan,” and the one about breaking barriers, “Masters of Sex,” are quite compatible in their combativeness.

By Al AlexanderFor The Patriot Ledger

Two of Showtime’s biggest hits begin their sophomore seasons Sunday night and the pair couldn’t be more different. Or, at least that’s the way it seems. Look closer and you’ll discover that the show about breaking heads, “Ray Donovan,” and the one about breaking barriers, “Masters of Sex,” are quite compatible in their combativeness. At their cores, both pit the haves against the have-nots, the privileged against the disadvantaged and the old guard vs. the new. And watching them clash is pretty close to riveting, especially when you observe them back-to-back and begin to identify identical themes of race, ethics, sexism and archaic beliefs.

“Masters,” debuting at 10 p.m., remains the superior of the two, fluidly combining “Mad Men” nostalgia with eye-opening observations about how little we know about our favorite subject: SEX. You, pardon the expression, come for the eroticism and nudity, but stay for the “will they or won’t they” between Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Emmy-nominee Lizzy Caplan), the dedicated researchers who literally wrote the book on human sexuality. He’s married; she’s not. He’s a dad who hates kids; she’s a mother who adores them. He’s an introverted fuddy-duddy; she’s an extroverted hellcat. And on and on it goes. But the one thing they have in common – their fascination with sex – is what continually draws Masters’ moth to Johnson’s flame. You keep expecting them to get burned. Yet, we’re the ones getting hotter.

Their lovemaking is also the perfect antidote for the murder and mayhem unfolding in the previous hour on “Ray Donovan,” or as I like to call it, the Irish-American “Sopranos.” Like Big Tony, Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) loves his wife and two kids and will do anything to make them happy, even if it requires rearranging a few faces. And like Tony, a parent is the bane of Ray’s existence. That would be papa Mickey ( Emmy-nominee Jon Voight), the former Walpole (State Prison) resident, who’s opted to serve out his parole in sunny L.A. beneath the bosom of his beloved ex-wife (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and the four sons (Schreiber, Dash Mihok, Eddie Marsan and Brockton’s Pooch Hall) whose hate for the old man runs the gamut from mild to intense. They’re not alone. The FBI, led by cast newcomer Hank Azaria (aka the voice of Apu), also has it out for Mickey, who the bureau longs to implicate in the death of the show’s Whitey Bulger effigy, Sully Sullivan (James Woods).

As both seasons open, Ray and Dr. Masters are on the move to new digs. For Ray, it’s a space-age home in the tony Beverly Hills neighborhood of Trousdale, while the good doctor, ostracized by his former employer for perversions unbefitting a scientist, is setting up shop across town at St. Louis’ Gateway Memorial Hospital under the close watch of hospital administrator (and horrid joke-teller), Dr. Doug Gatehouse (a terrific Danny Huston). Their respective conflicts are pretty much the same. Ray is trying to stay a step ahead of his father and the law, and Masters continues to worm his way through moral roadblocks. What the two men share, besides serious daddy issues, are character deficiencies that hopelessly prevent them from being better men. And their women proverbially end up paying for it.

At least Ray’s wife, Abby (Paula Malcomson, still struggling with a thick Boston accent), and Masters’ bride, Libby (an outstanding Caitlin FitzGerald), get to live high off the hog, while poor Ginny Johnson needs to work two jobs just to feed her two kids and keep a roof over their heads. What’s great about the latter is her determination to never take no for an answer. You thrill at watching her smashing through glass ceilings. But what makes Caplan’s performance so mesmerizing is her ability to so vividly evoke her character’s incremental growth in confidence and assertiveness. It’s something you believe, and just as importantly, believe in.

Abby doesn’t suffer fools easily, either. There’s a giant chip on her shoulder that’s largely of her own making. It’s rooted in her fear that her Boston provincialism is clashing mightily with the superficiality of the native Los Angelinos. And it’s fortified by people like her new Valley Girl neighbor who makes fun of the way Abby drops her R’s. It’s almost as bad as the subtle racism on “Masters,” when Libby casually admonishes her newborn’s black nanny for saying “ax” instead of “ask.” But in both shows the way people talk isn’t as damning as where they come from. Like Ginny Johnson, the Southie-bred Donovan’s are automatically treated as second-class citizens because they clearly didn’t have “the proper upbringing,” meaning they didn’t attend prep school and the “right” college. Not that they wouldn’t have liked to, had their families had the money and proper parental guidance.

Instead, they chose to become fighters in every sense of the word, a point beautifully driven home in Episode 3 of “Masters of Sex,” when Ginny and Bill embark on an evening tryst at an out-of-town hotel. Between lovemaking sessions, they share a growing fascination with the boxing match playing on their TV, pitting an aging black man (Archie “Old Mongoose” Moore) against a young white man (Yvon “The Fighting Fisherman” Durelle). The 1958 bout, one of the first ever televised nationally, is a back-and-forth affair that serves as a perfect metaphor for Bill and Ginny’s often bellicose relationship that finds them taking turns holding the upper hand. Their verbal sparring takes up nearly the entire hour and it’s one of the best 60 minutes you’ll ever spend. The writing by Amy Lippman and the direction by the legendary Michael Apted (the “Up” series of documentaries) is impeccable, but what makes it an instant classic are the captivating performances turned in by Sheen and Caplan, both of whom send shivers. It’s easily the best episode of the entire series – and that’s saying something. It also makes it easier to forgive the show’s occasional missteps, such as a scene in which a disgruntled doctor’s wife commandeers the hospital PA system to announce that her husband is a carousing cad. It’s almost as bad as last season’s bit about the civil defense drills. Both are meant to be humorous, but their tone is completely off. Thankfully such faux pas are rare.

Not so with “Ray Donovan,” where you see the gears grinding far too often. Many of these are cringe-worthy, like scenes in which Rosanna Arquette’s doomed character from last season returns in the shape of a talking dolphin. Or Ray’s gnat of a nemesis, movie producer Stu Feldman (Josh Pais), asking Ray to set him up with his favorite porn star in exchange for helping Ray’s daughter (the acting-challenged Kerris Dorsey) gain admission to a prestigious prep school. It’s just silly, as is the continuing bit about the brothers covering up the murder of a molesting Boston priest, and newcomer Vinessa Shaw as a nosy Boston Globe reporter looking into the mysterious death of Sully Sullivan. Luckily, the show has Schreiber around to continually save it from the kind of embarrassing scrapes Ray is repeatedly asked to fix for his lawyer boss (Elliott Gould). Still, there’s a noticeable drop off in quality.

“Ray Donovan” also continues to suffer from a lack of interesting supporting characters, a perk that “Masters of Sex” delivers in spades. From Beau Bridges’ longing to find a cure for his homosexuality to Julianne Nicholson’s fight against cancer and sexism to Emmy-nominee Allison Janney learning that her 30-year marriage was a fraud, it’s rare for the show not to leave you deeply moved. It’s supposed to be about sex, but what it’s really about is life and how we often prevent ourselves from living it. To a much lesser degree, it’s the same on “Ray Donovan.” One packs thrills; the other, tears. But they’re both a great way to spend time in the dark, as they enable us to see the light.